National Defence committee  Sir, there's no doubt that my discussions with the Surgeon General lead me to believe that they are exploring all options for services and trying to find the right treatment for soldiers. The case you mentioned is one I'm familiar with. He was a soldier who was injured under my command in Afghanistan.

National Defence committee  I'll take a quick shot at it. I would say that, even with the broken leg, the broken leg can't be repaired if the patient doesn't interface with the doctor. So if a person is coming to your office or anyone else's office, the aim is clearly to get them in connection with someone who can help them, and that someone, in my mind, would be the Canadian Forces medical health system.

National Defence committee  Sir, I would start by saying that in theatre the aim is to help every soldier, whether their injury is mental or physical. There have been occasions on which Colonel Lavoie and I have actually worked closely and monitored cases and tried everything with mental health specialists to ensure that individuals who were suffering got the care they needed and were brought back on the road to recovery.

National Defence committee  Sir, I wish I could answer that question. I don't have the answer. I'm not sure if the Surgeon General had that information when she appeared before this panel, but if not, we will take that on notice and see if we can provide that.

National Defence committee  I would suggest that this is the wrong trio to answer that question. The medical documents are held by the medical community, and the challenge would be for someone in the medical community to look at the matter and decide the best way to deal with it. This is beyond our purview.

National Defence committee  I'll give a general comment and then I'll turn it over to the COs, whose responsibility it is to fill out these forms. It is a document that Veterans Affairs reviews with respect to compensation and pensions. It records the incident and the circumstances to confirm that the individual was on duty at the time, and that the incident was the result of a service necessity.

National Defence committee  And that's an issue of not knowing what the scope of the problem is. I wouldn't be able to tell you whether there's enough bandwidth to pump those electrons through or not. So it really is, technically, trying to figure out what the problem is and find the technical solution. It's certainly beyond my ability as a liberal arts student.

National Defence committee  From my understanding, the statistics, if they're there, have not been compiled yet from the rotation. The 3rd Battalion of the Van Doos battle group has just come back home, and I'm not aware that the statistics on the challenges faced by them have been compiled at this time. I would say, as I mentioned earlier, there are stressors on everyone, and everyone handles those stresses in a different manner.

National Defence committee  The numbers have remained the same. The numbers of psychiatrists who were there on rotation 2 and rotation 3 are the same as on rotation 4 and rotation 5. So those have not changed. I had a discussion the other day with my senior medical officer from rotation 3. His belief, after looking at the statistics that he had for rotation 3, was that the complement of mental health specialists from psychiatrists to mental health nurses to social workers to padres was sufficient to handle the demand that was placed on them, not only by Canadian soldiers, but also by soldiers from other nations who were in Kandahar and could access that Canadian system as well.

National Defence committee  It is difficult for us to respond to cases of soldiers coming back. We don't have access, nor should we have access, to their medical documents to determine what has occurred. Those situations are best addressed by the medical world, which can investigate and determine where help is and what can be provided.

National Defence committee  Absolutely. From the standpoint of CEFCOM, we work closely with the Department of Foreign Affairs and CIDA, offering them the opportunity to get their folks to training venues like Wainwright. Not only can they meet the people they will work with in theatre, but they will have some exposure to some of the challenges they'll have in that environment.

National Defence committee  I think in my experience there were two things. One was the battlemind program that was presented to us, and the chance we had to select a number of facilitated programs where we could discuss issues, whether it was command and leadership, or family relationships. It allowed us to go into a fairly benign environment and have access to some very qualified medical folks who could help us with some issues.

National Defence committee  Sir, my understanding is that the commander of the army, General Leslie, has been asked to look at the length of tours. At some point he will come back and present some options to the Chief of the Defence Staff.

National Defence committee  Perhaps to give you a more complete picture, at Regional Command South it was the job of the commander and his staff to make sure that across all of the provinces in Regional Command South there were not so many operations ongoing that, if things went wrong, it would overwhelm the medevac system.

National Defence committee  I would start with the family support issue. I agree with you that in theatre, as Colonel Hetherington said, living very closely together, it's a very tight-knit community. Those bonds tend to break when you come back home and go back to your own life with your family. Single soldiers clearly have greater challenges, since they don't necessarily have families to go back to on the bases to which they're posted.